Patriotic Front member

Exner, Anton

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:00 +0000

Exner, Anton Leonhard Weidinger Fri, 03/05/2021 - 12:48

Anton Exner

4 January 1882 Vienna – 27 September 1952 Vienna

Anton Exner was the most important dealer, collector and assessor of East Asian art in Vienna between the wars. His collection included all branches of Asian – particularly Chinese and Japanese – art from all epochs. He worked his way up from modest circumstances. He had no formal higher education, and his expertise was self-taught. During a long sojourn in Canada and the USA from 1908 to 1910, he made contact for the first time with Chinese dealers. On the return voyage on a cargo ship, he acquired handicrafts and Japanese silk blouses at various Asian ports, which formed the basis for his future business activities in Vienna. From then on he went almost every year on buying trips to the Far East. From around 1912, he worked from his home at Lerchenfelderstraße 66 in Vienna's 8th district and from 1929 in the house he had acquired at Paniglgasse 18–20 in the 4th district. As he was returning from Asia in summer 1914, he was taken by surprise by the start of the First World War. He muddled through in the USA, opening an Asian art business on 56th Street in New York. He was interned for a time as an enemy alien. It was not until the end of 1919 that he was able to return to Vienna. The Dorotheum appointed him as a sworn assessor of Asian art, a position he held for around a quarter of a century. From the early 1920s, he lent objects for all major exhibitions of Asian art in Vienna. Exner's family origins in the Sudetenland influenced his ideological beliefs. He had long been a supporter of pan-German nationalism and joined the NSDAP in 1931 (membership number 782343). He remained a member even when the Party was banned but also joined the Vaterländische Front (Fatherland Front). During the Nazi era, he often evaluated Asian art from collections expropriated from Jews, particularly for auctions in the Dorotheum. In 1938, with the support of the Reichsstatthalterei (especially its state secretary for cultural affairs at the time Kajetan Mühlmann), the idea of an Asian art museum in Vienna was put forward, with Exner's collection providing the basis. Anton Exner and his son Walter Exner were the driving forces behind the museum and were to have leading functions in it. The project was abandoned above all because of the opposition of the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna), as it would have had to give up its own Asian art holdings. At the beginning of 1939, Anton Exner offered to lend some of his Asian art collection to the museum. The museum chose the objects it wanted and an agreement was concluded. In 1943 a major exchange took place between Exner and the Kunstgewerbemuseum, with the museum swapping above all Asian export and commercial items from the former Handelsmuseum (trade museum) for valuable applied art items. In 1944 Exner signed a notarized document transforming the temporary loan into a lifetime loan and donation in the event of his death. This "first donation" consisting of 2,195 objects was not agreed with Anton's son Walter Exner, who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht. A letter of protest by Walter Exner to the museum in 1944 was not followed up.

In June 1945 Anton Exner was arrested as a former Nazi and brought to trial before a Volksgericht for membership of the NSDAP during the period of illegality (§ 10 of the Prohibition Act) and suspicion of illegal enrichment (§ 6 of the War Criminals Act). The case also dealt with the Aryanization of Wilma Werner's art dealership in Vienna city centre by Anton Exner's daughter, Edith Schmaelz, thought to have been at Exner's instigation. On application of the Kunstgewerbemuseum the remainder of Exner's private collection was secured by the state and transferred to Dorotheum depots. In a police report, Anton Exner offered on 28 June 1945 to give the objects to the Republic. In 1946 he confirmed this "second donation" with legally binding force, again without the agreement of his son, who had helped compile the collection. Year-long efforts by Walter Exner to obtain his share of the donation from the MAK came to nothing. The Volksgericht case against Anton Exner and several close relatives was dropped. The MAK currently owns around 3,700 mostly very valuable objects from the Exner collection, and the Weltmuseum Wien 177 inventory numbers with the same provenance. Provenance research is complicated in particular by the fact that there are no reliable details of previous owners and dealers, and it remains unclear which objects were acquired during the numerous buying trips by Anton (and Walter) Exner and which were acquired in Austria and other European countries, particularly during the Nazi era. Although Anton Exner wrote to the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts) in 1948 that as far as he knew there were no expropriated items in his collection, the museum restituted a number of objects from the Exner collection in the second half of the 1940s and the 1950s that had been part of the collections of Klara Mertens-Steiner, Ernst Dub, Richard E. Weiss and Caroline (Karoline) Czeczowiczka.

Keywords

Art dealership

Art collector

Patriotic Front member

NSDAP membership

Assessor

Gabriele Anderl

25 February 2021

Publications about the person / institution

Gabriele Anderl, "Nicht einmal abschätzbarer Wert…". Anton und Walter Exner – Kunsthändler, Stifter, Nationalsozialisten – und ihre Sammlung asiatischer Kunst in Wien, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 5), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014, 339–406, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.339.

Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung (Hg.), Zum Gedenken an Anton Exner (1882–1952), Festvorträge, Wien 1982.

Walter Exner, Die Sammlung Exner, in: Josef Kreiner (Hg.), Japan-Sammlungen in Museen Mitteleuropas – Geschichte, Aufbau und gegenwärtige Probleme, Bonn 1981, 225–234.

Archives

MAK-Archiv, Hauptakten (Auswahl): Zl. 75-1939, 10-1940, 1022-1941, 70-1942, 81-1942, 304-1944, 12-1945, 87-1946, 860-1948, 16-1950, 53-1954.

OeStA/AdR, UWK, BMU, Kunstangelegenheiten, Sammelmappe 51, 02, Sammlung Anton Exner.
OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Gauakt 295.193, Anton Exner.

Weltmuseum Wien, Archiv, Sammlermappe Anton Exner.

WStLA, Volksgericht, A1, Vg Vr 9002/46, Anton Exner.

GND: 136831982

VIAF: 50610324

Wikidata: Q106708035

Hamel, Oskar

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:02 +0000

Hamel, Oskar Leonhard Weidinger Fri, 03/05/2021 - 16:37

Oskar Hamel

5 May 1889 Vienna – 28 February 1946 Vienna

Until 1921, Oskar Hamel was an officer and then senior officer in the Vienna Provincial Tax Office before turning to antiques and starting an independent business in 1923. He also collected coins and stamps. He joined the NSDAP in May 1933 and remained a member during the time it was banned. In 1937 he also joined the Vaterländische Front (Fatherland Front). Even before the annexation he worked with Karoline Nehammer in her antiques business at Piaristengasse 11 in Vienna's 8th district. In 1943 he registered his own sole proprietorship at the same address. In 1940 he became a court-sworn expert and in 1943 assessor in the art department of the Dorotheum. In 1942 he and Nehammer acquired Burg Seebenstein near Wiener Neustadt from the Prince of Liechtenstein and established a furniture depot in Palais Auersperg in Vienna. Hamel did business with the Special Representatives Hans Posse and Hermann Voss and was also a purchaser for Franz Josef II of Liechtenstein and his art consultant Gustav Wilhelm. In 1945 he appeared before the Vienna Volksgericht together with his business partner Karoline Nehammer and her brother Rudolf Prinz on suspicion of illegal enrichment (§ 6 of the War Criminals Act). Hamel was accused of having acquired artworks and valuables goods at auctions, which had been seized from removal goods, and to have profited from enforced sales by persecutees and in that way of having increased his assets during the Nazi period thirteenfold. Hamel died in custody before he was brought to trial and sentenced.

Provenance research regularly deals with objects acquired by museums from Hamel. For example, artworks belonging to Isidor and Jenny Mautner, which had been acquired in 1938 und 1939 through Oskar Hamel by the Städtische Sammlungen Wien, were restituted to the heirs. In other cases the original provenance has still to be clarified.

Keywords

Antiques business

Art dealership

Patriotic Front member

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Gabriele Anderl, “Am Wiener Platz“. Schlaglichter auf die Rolle des Wiener Kunsthandels während der NS-Zeit, in: Gabriele Anderl/Alexandra Caruso (Hg.), NS-Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2005, 171–211.

Esther Tisa Francini, Liechtenstein und der Internationale Kunstmarkt 1933–1945, Veröffentlichungen der Unabhängigen Historikerkommission Liechtenstein Zweiter Weltkrieg. Historischer Verein für das Fürstentum Liechtenstein, Vaduz-Zürich 2005, 182–188.

Archives

BDA-Archiv, Restitutionsmaterialien, K. 42, PM Nehammer-Prinz, Lilli (Oskar Hamel).

GISA Servicestelle, Magistratsabteilung 63 der Stadt Wien, Firmenblatt Oskar Hamel.

OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Gauakt 3770, Oskar Hamel.

WStLA, M. Abt. 119, A41, VEAV 618, 1. Bez., Oskar Hamel.
WStLA, Volksgericht, A1, Vg Vr 2351/45, Oskar Hamel, Rudolf Prinz, Karoline Nehammer.

Schützenhofer, Viktor

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:53 +0000

Schützenhofer, Viktor

Leonhard Weidinger Tue, 04/27/2021 - 13:30

Viktor Schützenhofer

4 March 1878 Vienna – 24 February 1961 Vienna

Viktor Schützenhofer studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. He joined the k. k. österreichische Staatsbahnen in 1902 and was summoned in 1907 by its chief designer Karl Gölsdorf to the Railway Ministry, where he was involved above all in the construction and supervision of rolling stock. He travelled frequently: in 1904 as reporter to the World's Fair in St Louis, in 1910 as commissioner to the World Transport Exhibition in Buenos Aires, in 1918 for study purposes to Sweden and in 1923 for three months to the USA. In 1924 he was made redundant at the age of forty-six and continued his career in private industry. In 1930 he returned to working for the state as director of the Technisches Museum Wien (TMW). He joined the Vaterländische Front (Fatherland Front) in 1933 and was briefly in the Pan Europa movement. After the annexation of Austria, he joined a number of Nazi affiliated organizations such as the Nationalsozialistischer Bund Deutscher Technik (National Socialist Federation of German Technology) but did not apply for membership of the NSDAP. As an expert in the history of technology and experienced public servant, he retained his position as director, partly because he had apparently allowed illegal Nazis on the staff before 1938 to continue working. After the death of Ludwig Erhard, first director of the TMW, from 1940 he also headed the affiliated Forschungsinstitut für Technikgeschichte (Research Institute for the History of Technology) and edited the Blätter für Technikgeschichte. During the Nazi era he had attempted to limit the NSDAP's influence on the TMW and was thus allowed to remain in office after 1945 until he retired in 1949. In this way he was able to pursue a public service career without interruption despite all the political upheavals of the time. In October 1945, with the support of the Soviet occupation force and after September 1945 the French occupiers as well, the Technisches Museum Wien became the first Viennese museum to open after the war.

Keywords

Patriotic Front member

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Helmut Lackner/Katharina Jesswein/Gabriele Zuna-Kratky (Hg.), 100 Jahre Technisches Museum Wien, Wien 2009.

Archives

TMW-Archiv, PA Schützenhofer.

GND: 140132317

VIAF: 103433352

Wikidata: Q55678055

Weißenhofer, Anselm

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:58 +0000

Weißenhofer, Anselm Leonhard Weidinger Wed, 03/31/2021 - 19:17

Anselm Weißenhofer

19 August 1883 Ybbsitz – 14 January 1961 Vienna

also Anselm Weissenhofer

Anselm Weißenhofer completed his Catholic theology studies in 1908 and became a priest. In 1919 he obtained a doctorate in art history and habilitated four years later in ecclesiastical art history at the University of Vienna, subsequently lecturing in the Faculty of Catholic Theology and the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Vienna, where he was appointed extraordinary professor in 1930 and also taught general history of art. Apart from working as a secondary school religion teacher, he was curator of the Schottenstift picture gallery from 1925 to 1930. Many publications and memberships – among others, as chairman of the art section of the Leo-Gesellschaft in Austria, in the Neuer Werkbund, the Gesellschaft zur Förderung österreichischer Kunst im Ausland, the Wiener Vereinigung bildender Künstler and the Wiener Secession – confirm his interest in art history, particularly religious art. Although becoming a member of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts) in July 1939, according to his personnel files, remuneration for his teaching at the University of Vienna and Kunstgewerbeschule was suspended for ideological reasons. He continued to lecture and organize excursions at both schools, however, and was appointed as an unbudgeted professor in 1940. In May 1940, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer appointed him director of the Dom- und Diözesanmuseum (Cathedral and Diocese Museum). The Gaupersonalamt (Gau personnel department) listed him as a Catholic priest with nationalist inclinations and not hostile to National Socialism. He retired as a secondary school teacher in 1943 at the age of sixty. In October 1945 he once again obtained a lectureship at the University of Vienna and the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst (College of Applied Arts), as it was now called, in Vienna. From October 1947 until 1959 he also taught at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien (Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna).

Keywords

Patriotic Front member

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Andreas Lebschik, Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des Wiener erzbischöflichen Dom- und Diözesanmuseums, Wien 1990.

Franz Loidl, In memorian Prof. Weißenhofer (1883/1961), in: Beiträge zur Wiener Diözesangeschichte. Beilage des Wiener Diözesanblattes 4 (1961), 17–18.

Margarethe Poch-Kalous, Die Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien und ihre Mäzene, Sonderabdruck aus: Unsere Heimat 5/6 (1961) , 115–122.

Bertl Sonnleitner, Josef Anselm Weißenhofer 1883–1961. Ein Vorkämpfer christlicher Kunst, Ybbsitz 1983.

Publications by the person / institution

Anselm Weißenhofer, Wiener Altarbilder des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, in: Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 3/4 (1928), 189–217.

Archives

Archiv des Schottenstifts Wien, Teilnachlass Anselm Weißenhofer.

DAW, NL Prälat Franz Loidl, K. 33, 34, NL Anselm Weißenhofer.

OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Gauakt 138815, Anselm Weißenhofer.
OeStA/AdR, UWK, BMU, Personalakten, 16/012, Anselm Weißenhofer.

UAAbKW, Jahresberichte 1938–1945.
UAAbKW, PA 49, Anselm Weißenhofer.

UAW, Phil. Rig. Akt, PN 4582b, Fol. 8, Anselm Weißenhofer.
UAW, Senat S 265.1.17, Personalstandesblatt Anselm Weißenhofer.
UAW, Senat S 304, Sign. 1361, Fol. 2, Anselm Weißenhofer.

WStLA, BG Döbling, A4/3 – 3A, Verlassenschaft Anselm Weißenhofer.
WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Anselm Weißenhofer.

GND: 118766503

VIAF: 50021120

Wikidata: Q94828449

Wurzbach-Tannenberg, Alfred Wolfgang

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:00 +0000

Wurzbach-Tannenberg, Alfred Wolfgang Leonhard Weidinger Wed, 03/31/2021 - 19:29

Alfred Wolfgang Wurzbach-Tannenberg

3 June 1879 Vienna – 10 February 1957 Vienna

Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg started studying law at the University of Vienna but switched after the Second State Examination to Romance philology. He obtained his doctorate in 1902 at the University of Tübingen, and habilitated in 1907 at the University of Vienna. After a few years as lecturer at the Institut für Romanistik (Institute of Romance Philology) in Vienna, in 1922 he was appointed extraordinary professor of Romance languages and literature. On 28 May 1938 he was forced to retire from the University of Vienna at the age of fifty-eight. His application for membership of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Literature Chamber) was rejected because he was considered a "first-degree Mischling" and also ideologically unsound. This conflicts with the assessment by the Vienna Gaupersonalamt (Gau personnel department), which states that he was sympathetic to the National Socialist movement. Wurzbach-Tannenberg is not known to have been a member of the NSDAP or affiliated bodies.

On 28 February 1946 he was appointed by the Federal President as ordinary professor of Romance languages and literature at the University of Vienna, backdated to 27 April 1945. Wurzbach-Tannenberg possessed an extensive collection of books, autographs, portraits and historical medals, which he had written about in 1943 in Katalog meiner Sammlung von Medaillen, Plaketten und Jetons, zugleich ein Handbuch für Sammler. He had also inherited an art collection from his grandfather Joseph Ritter von Lippmann-Lissingen (1827–1900), which included paintings by Old Dutch masters. He bequeathed thirty Dutch pictures and some small-format paintings in 1953 to the Paintings Gallery of the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien.

Keywords

Art collector

Patriotic Front member

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Margarethe Poch-Kalous, Das Legat Wolfgang v. Wurzbach, Wien 1964.

E. Schaffran, Das Wurzbach-Legat der Galerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien, in: Die Weltkunst (1954) 7, 3

Publications by the person / institution

Wolfgang von Wurzbach, Katalog meiner Sammlung von Medaillen, Plaketten und Jetons, zugleich ein Handbuch für Sammler, Zürich-Leipzig-Wien 1943.
Wolfgang von Wurzbach, Aus den Erinnerungen eines Sammlers. Nebst einem Verzeichnis seltener und interessanter Bücher, Wien-Bad Bocklet-Mainfranken-Zürich 1953.
Wolfgang von Wurzbach, Josef Kriehuber, der Porträtlithograph der Wiener Gesellschaft, Wien 1954.

Archives

BDA-Archiv, Wohnungsanforderungen, Wohnungsbesichtigung Dr. Alfred Wurzbach, Wien 1, Giselastraße 2, 2. Stock, Tür 9, Akt 284-1921.

OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Gauakt 215.365, Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.
OeStA/AdR, UWK, BMU, K. 64, Sign. 15 B1, Akademie der bildenden Künste 1952–1965, Akt 37.859-5/57, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Univ. Prof. Dr. Alfred Wolfgang Wurzbach, Schenkung auf den Todesfall.
OeStA/AdR, UWK, BMU, K. 64, Sign. 15 B1, Akademie der bildenden Künste 1952–1965, Akt 88.740 – II/5-53, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Univ. Prof. i. R. Dr. Alfred Wolfgang Wurzbach-Tannenberg, Verleihung der Ehrenmitgliedschaft.

UAW, Phil. PA 3871, Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.
UAW, Senat S 304, Sign. 1425, Fol. 4, Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.

WStLA, BG Innere Stadt, A4/3 – 3A, Verlassenschaft Alfred von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.
WStLA, BG Innere Stadt, A4/9 – 9A, Verlassenschaft Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.
WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach-Tannenberg.

GND: 117359157

VIAF: 76307152

Wikidata: Q1718666